GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 31 - February 2015

My best advice is to watch these mobile search results closely to see what opportunities there are for you. Links and mobile rankings As an affiliate you want to do well on the search results and of course as you know mobile search share is growing, so there is pressure to get on and rank in mobile SEO. As we all know, links are core to getting you ranked. Despite what many well-meaning practitioners say, if you have amaz- ing content, that alone will not get you ranked. You have to have good links. In theory if you have m.mysite.com and mysite.com, both will rank on the same key phrase. But the cost of all this link build- ing to both websites doesn't make sense in most cases. Is also happens that mobile websites tend not to get many links because linking usually happens from a desktop ma- chine with a keyboard and a mouse. It's a simple physical thing; dropping a link into a piece of content from a mobile user interface is more than just annoying. As a result the vast majority of linking happens through a desktop user interface, and of course if you're on a desk- top machine you will probably not be looking at other mobile websites. If you've ever wondered why there are so few mobile sites in desktop search results, that's why. Here's a diagram (see right-hand-page) showing this whole dynamic in action. More links equal a high ranking. And fewer links mean lower rankings, of course. Ideal site architecture Any affiliate up to speed on things will know responsive Web design is the way forward. The catch with responsive design is that valid CSS is far more complex than with ordinary desk- top sites. It's because in an ideal world you have expand/collapse themes which will just resize and adjust depending on the screen size you’re working with. On top of that you also have different image assets being ren- dered dependent on the size of the screen. The underlying idea is that if you're on mobile, bandwidth is more costly and speeds are slower. You should therefore show smaller images and try to reduce file size as much as possible. The upshot is it's complicated. Part of 90 Digital’s business is Web development, and one of the big challenges is to build truly responsive and robust tem- plates. What we tend to do is use framework themes which have most of the elements we need in place already. All we have to do then is modify the theme, generate the right assets and adapt the CSS so the site looks pretty and functional. If you have a transactional site, the complexity grows expo- nentially. Fortunately the vast majority of affiliates are only dealing with the publishing of content. Of course you have to make content look pretty and it has to convert, but at least you're not trying to build a full ca- sino experience. Site development With link building it’s simple; just link to your desktop site and it will do the ranking for you on mobile search. If you don't have a responsive site then just check your analyt- ics to see if mobile user bounce rates are high when compared to your desktop user bounce rates. If mobile users aren't happy with your nonresponsive site, then maybe it's time for some site surgery. My best advice if you're thinking of building a new affiliate site so it’s fully responsive is to look at a robust CMS like Drupal or WordPress. All the little things add up; they make a huge difference to your website and ultimately to your bottom line. It's easy to build a simple CMS but it’s really hard to build one with all the functionality and plug-ins you would ever need. What I love about WordPress is that everything I think I need now and everything I don't know I’ll need later will have been built for it. All I have to do is buy a nice-looking theme for $50 and start personalizing. Why build something from the ground up when it’s already waiting for you? Ironing it all out Google has a problematic relationship with mobile search. If you do any random search from a mobile device, chances are you will come across at least a few websites which have hor- rible mobile user experience. This is a real issue for Google because if users don't like what they see on mobile they will go to another search engine. COVER STORY Mobile SEO and affiliates